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Message: [QUOTE="Bombastus, post: 91531, member: 2178"] Ticketmaster would have 275 days after final judgment to make its new open-distribution system operational for qualifying major concert venues. Rival marketplaces can sell the tickets, but Ticketmaster can remain underneath the transaction. A venue could keep Ticketmaster's back end while allocating primary tickets to another eligible seller such as a competing marketplace. The rival would run the customer-facing sale, process payments, manage refunds, handle customer accounts, and settle proceeds with the venue or promoter. Ticketmaster would still perform the infrastructure work underneath those transactions. The proposal formally separates the marketplace a fan sees from the venue technology they never see. It sits at the center of [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/aeg-seatgeek-challenge-live-nations-ticketmaster-deal.76926/']the fight over Live Nation's Ticketmaster settlement[/URL][/B] because a rival can gain access to sales without replacing Ticketmaster's core position. [HEADING=2]Ticketmaster keeps the infrastructure beneath rival sales[/HEADING] Ticketmaster's back end would continue handling event and inventory configuration, seat maps, ticket holds, barcode generation, entry validation, and operational logs. It would also provide the feeds and interfaces needed for another ticketing company to retrieve inventory and complete a sale. Rivals get meaningful commercial control without taking over the system underneath. An eligible competitor could list allocated tickets, run checkout, collect payment, and deal with exchanges or chargebacks using its own technology. It could also maintain the customer relationship instead of sending buyers through Ticketmaster's consumer marketplace. The [B]consumer-facing ticket storefront[/B] can change while the venue's system of record remains in Ticketmaster's hands. Fans buying through a rival marketplace are not supposed to face extra steps simply because Ticketmaster supplies the back end. The system must support automated ticket and barcode transfers, and buyers cannot be forced into a Ticketmaster website, app, or account for routine transfer or resale. Extra consumer fees tied to those transfers are also barred. The money flow is less clean-cut for the competing seller. Ticketmaster may charge eligible ticketing providers fees intended to cover the costs of its back-end services, with those charges subject to verification by the appointed monitor. A rival can win the checkout and customer relationship while still paying the incumbent whose infrastructure makes the ticket usable at the door. [HEADING=2]Rival marketplaces gain access without automatic equality[/HEADING] The proposed rules require Ticketmaster to publish and update documentation needed to use the open system. Ticketmaster also cannot use contracts, pricing or technology to restrict a major venue's choice of eligible providers, and venues may choose Ticketmaster's back end without buying its marketplace. Venues are even allowed to operate multiple primary ticketing back ends if they want to. Eligibility still has boundaries. A marketplace must already operate as an established primary ticketing business in the United States or show it can provide full primary ticketing services for major venues. Providers involved in secondary sales also face conditions around speculative listings, seller identification and artist restrictions on resale. A monitor gets an unusually practical role when access disputes arise. If Ticketmaster says a marketplace does not qualify, it must tell the monitor, who decides whether the provider meets the settlement's eligibility rules. Ticketmaster also cannot use client ticketing data gathered through third-party transfers for unrelated purposes outside operating its back-end service. Those safeguards address obvious ways an integration could be made commercially useless without formally refusing access. They do not, however, create a detailed technical performance standard. The judgment sets a 275-day deadline and requires reasonable deficiencies to be addressed, but it does not spell out specific uptime targets, response-time thresholds, or parity tests between Ticketmaster's marketplace and an integrated rival. [HEADING=2]Existing contracts put hard limits on the opening[/HEADING] Current Ticketmaster contracts do not all become fully open on day one. Major venues with existing deals must be allowed to use another eligible marketplace for one live event in each remaining contract year, with the venue choosing the event. Automatic renewal clauses in those existing major-venue contracts would also become unenforceable. Longer contracts get another route. A major venue with at least four years left can receive an option to move up to 20 percent of fee-bearing primary inventory to eligible rivals for the remaining term. Ticketmaster may adjust payments or other economic benefits tied to exclusivity on a proportional basis, and disputes over those adjustments go to the monitor. The 20 percent allocation cannot simply be filled with whichever seats are least desirable. The venue must use 20 percent of each section or tier, 20 percent of events across the year, or a qualifying combination of both. Future fully exclusive Ticketmaster contracts with major venues would be capped at four years, while partially nonexclusive contracts can run longer in specified circumstances. [/QUOTE]

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